


Burning Questions

by lakesandquarries



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Child Death, Gaster Blasters, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Medical Experimentation, alcohol mention, baby blasters, i accidentally deleted all my tags, implied gore, let me know if I missed anything, needle mention, that should be the major stuff, this is the most self indulgent thing ive ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakesandquarries/pseuds/lakesandquarries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sans falls asleep at Grillby's. Grillby gets worried. A long talk ensues. Post Pacifist, featuring Grillby and Sans being bros and Gaster being a huge dick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Questions

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by abadtime's The Best of Times, the Worst of Times (http://abadtime.tumblr.com/The-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times), sansybones's Darker Yet Darker (http://sansybones.tumblr.com/tagged/darkeryet/chrono), and sushinfood's voice acting, especially his take on Grillby (http://sushinfood.tumblr.com/tagged/sushi-voice).

"Sans."

"mmph."

"Sans, wake up."

"Nnn..." Sans opens his eyes, blinking. There’s a hand on his shoulder, warm even through the thick fabric of his hoodie. "Wha...Grillby? Shit, how long was I asleep?"

"A little over an hour."

"Jeez, Grillbz, why didn't you wake me up earlier? I should head home, Papyrus is probably freaking out..."

"I already called him and let him know."

"Then..." 

"Why did I wake you up?" Grillby asks. "I...wanted to talk to you."

"About?" _Please dont be something serious,_ Sans begs internally.

"Sans, I have known you for quite some time." 

Sans chuckles. "Yeah, you could say that."

"I would like to think that I know you well enough to be able to tell when you are upset. And right now, I am getting that feeling." _Shit._

"I'm fine, Grillby." He wasn't ready for this conversation. He didn’t want to talk about his nightmares, about himself. He wanted to go back to sleep and not wake up.  
"Do not lie to me, Sans. You haven't fallen asleep in my restaurant in a very long time. Not since we were underground, actually. And yet today you not only fall asleep, you come in an hour before closing, get drunk, and pass out. You were talking in your sleep, you know," he adds, watching Sans's face for a reaction. "Most of it was unintelligible, but it sounded bad. You were screaming, Sans. About experiments and-"

"Look, Grillby, I don't wanna talk about it, okay?" Sans interrupts. "Its...its a long story, and it's not one I like to tell." He stretches and stands up, turning to leave. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna head ho-" 

" _Sans._ "

Sans sighs. "You really don't give up, do you Grillby?" He sits back down, gaze carefully avoiding Grillby's face. "Look, Grillby, this isn't a road you wanna go down. There's a reason I don't talk about myself, why I've never told you about my past. It's...not pretty."

"Sans, have I ever told you why I moved to Snowdin?"

Sans looks at Grillby, trying to remember if he had.

"I was not always the humble bartender I am now, Sans. I was alive to fight in the great war."

"But that would make you...."

"Very old, yes." He smiles (well, gives off the feeling of a smile, even if his face stays the same), but it falls quickly. "I did many things I regret. I hurt many people. Humans, Monsters, adults...children....." he sighs. "I moved to Snowdin as a way to punish myself for the things I have done. So whatever you tell me, Sans, I will not judge you, nor will I treat you any differently."

Sans goes silent, deep in thought. It’s a long time before he speaks again."I've- I've never told anyone about it," he says, voice little more than a whisper. "I'm not even sure where to start."

"Start with the beginning. Did...did you and Papyrus ever have parents? I remember when I first met you, you said you had no parents but...you must have had them at some point." 

Sans snorts humorlessly. "Depends on your definition of parent. Someone who raised us, took care of us, gave even a single shit about us? No. Someone that made us and then treated us like toys? Got that covered."

"....I see." 

"His name was Gaster," Sans says. "He was the royal scientist before Alphys. Brilliant guy, but no morals whatsoever. He...he wanted to make artificial souls. So he......he basically tore his soul apart." Sans pauses. "The stuff I'm gonna tell you...You can't let anyone know, okay? Especially not Papyrus. He doesn’t remember. He _shouldn't_ remember."

"Of course, Sans. I will not repeat anything you tell me."

"Thanks. So, where was I? Right, Gaster." Putting his arms behind his head, he leans back, chair lifting off the floor, trying to act like saying all this wasn't hurting him. "He, uh, he...." His voice falters and he lets his chair hit the floor. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. 

Saying it out loud makes it real. 

"He used parts of the humans that had already fallen to make us. Not just their bodies. Their souls, too." Swallowing, he kept going. "Pap and I...We're not real monsters. We're messy amalgamations of dead humans and an asshole scientist." Trying to prevent himself from crying, he shuts his eyes hard as he continues. "He made me first, right after the first human died. They were...they were a _kid_ , Grillby, just a little kid, like - like Frisk. I don't even know their name. I tried asking, but d - but _Gaster_ wouldn't tell me. I found a picture of them, once, in one of my files. They had blue eyes, and an oversized sweater, and ribbons in their hair, and - and -" He couldn't speak. He was shaking, now, eyes still squeezed tight, trying desperately not to cry. There was a sudden warmth on his shoulder. 

"Sans, please look at me." 

"I d-don't wanna get you wet," Sans replies shakily. 

"I can handle a little water, Sans," Grillby replies, pulling him into a hug. Surprised, Sans's eyes open. Tears fall and evaporate instantly as Sans lets himself be held. 

"What happened to those humans was not your fault," Grillby says before releasing him. "Do not blame yourself for them." 

Sans wipes away a tear with his sleeve. "Th-thanks."

"You can stop, if you want. I will not force you to speak."

"No, it...it feels good, to talk about it. I've been keeping it secret for so long." He clears his throat. "A-anyways. Gaster made me to be a weapon, initially. A tool. Papyrus was backup, mostly." He takes a deep breath. "I wanted to hate Papyrus. He got to play with toys and practice his magic while I got to be experimented on. But he was so sweet, so energetic, that I - I couldn't. We had a room in the lab and every night I'd read to him. Papyrus kept me going. Every time I wanted to give up, I thought of him. If I wasn't willing to be Gasters test subject, he'd use Papyrus. I couldn't let that happen." He paused. "It was hard. The stuff Gaster did, the experiments he tried, the things he made me do...It was bad. But I had Papyrus, and he was always so hopeful and excited and _happy_ , and I knew I couldn't give up. If not for me, then for him." 

"How old were you when Papyrus was..."

"I was five when the second human fell." Sans swallows. "Gaster made me kill them." There’s a sharp intake of breath beside him. He turns to see Grillby looking madder than Sans has ever seen him. "Grillby?"

"Gaster should hope I never meet him," Grillby says darkly. "You were just a child."

Sans looks at his hands. "Yeah," he says, voice barely audible. "I was."

"Sans," Grillby says, incredulous, "You can't blame yourself for that."

"I could have refused."

"You shouldn't have been told to in the first place."

Sans goes silent. 

"I cannot force you not to blame yourself," Grillby says quietly. "But it was not your fault. It was Gasters. You were a _child_ , Sans."

"....Thanks, Grillby." He attempts a smile. It doesn’t work "So, anyways. Gaster tore his soul apart even further to make Papyrus. By the time he was done, he didn’t have much of a soul left. He kept himself alive through sheer determination. And then...when I was nine, another human fell. Gaster wanted Papyrus to kill them. He was four. I couldn't let that happen. Papyrus was....he was kind, and innocent, and I couldn't let Gaster ruin all that." Sans lets out a shuddering breath. "So I killed them." He can feel Grillby look at him. "They put up a fight, though. Managed to land a few hits on me. Things...got bad. I don't really remember the fight, but when it was over they were....they were...." He can't get the words out. Doesn’t really want to. There's no good way to explain the things he’s capable of. Grillby might have said he wouldn't treat him any differently, but how could he not? Grillby has never seen Sans fight, has never seen the results of Gaster’s experiments. He's never seen the other version of Sans. Hopefully, he never would. 

"Sans?"

Then again...he'd thought Grillby would be horrified by the fact that he'd killed someone, but he'd comforted him about it. He takes a deep breath.

"I have this - thing. It's like...an alternate form, basically. Takes a hell of a lot of energy, but it's incredibly powerful. Gaster named it after him. Called it a Gaster Blaster." He grabs a napkin and pen and starts sketching. "My skull sorta...splits apart, almost? And then my legs kinda...it's hard to explain. It was. one of Gasters experiments, him trying to make me stronger. I had a hard time controlling it when I was little. The weirdest things would set me off, and it would take ages to get me back to normal. Pap was always good at calming me down, though. Luckily it hasn't happened in a while." He finishes the drawing and passes it to Grillby.

"What triggers it?" is all Grillby says. No shock, no horror....Maybe he should try talking about this more often.

"A lot of stuff, when I was a kid. Eventually I was able to get it under control to the point that it only happens if I don't use my magic enough." he glances over at Grillby, who is studying the sketch intensely. 

"I...I've seen this before."

"What?"

"When you and Papyrus were children, and first arrived in Snowdin. I saw a creature like this digging through my trash a few times. Eventually I started purposely leaving food inside."

Sans's eyes widen. "I thought I was being so sneaky....I never saw you. Did wonder why there were completely uneaten burgers in the trash, but I never thought..." He leans back in his chair. "Can't believe I never figured that out."

Grillby laughs. Sans smiles before remembering where he was in his story. "A-anyway. When I was fighting that human...that was the first time it happened. I don't remember the fight itself, but when I was myself again...I was covered in - in -" he chokes on the words. "It wasn't pretty, let's just say that. But Gaster was...he was _proud_ of me. And that was the worst part. He wanted to do more tests on that ability. He was so _excited_ about it. But it kept him from experimenting on Papyrus, so...I was okay. But it wasn't enough for Gaster. He wanted to be able to control it, to be able to trigger it whenever he wants. He started using determination on me." Grillby looks confused. Sans slows down. "Determination is a thing humans have. It's what lets their souls linger after death. Gaster had been using it to keep himself alive, but I guess he wanted to see how I would react to it." 

He pauses, reminds himself to breathe, then keeps talking. "It made my magic stronger, but that's not the only thing. I started having nightmares. Bad ones. Nightmares about me dying, about Papyrus dying, about people I'd never met dying. It took a while but I finally realised...They weren't dreams. They were memories."

"Memories?"

"Not mine. But other versions of me. I was seeing all the possible timelines."

"I...dont follow."

He grabs another napkin. "Ok, so this is a point in time," he says, drawing a small circle. "For sake of simplicity, let's say every event has two outcomes." He draws two lines sprouting from the circle. "And then those outcomes lead to more events-" He adds circles to the ends of the lines- "And those events have two outcomes-" Two more lines from each circle- "And so on. When I went to sleep, I would live out those events and outcomes. Sometimes it would be from the past, sometimes it'd be things that happened that day, sometimes it'd be from the future. As I got older, it started being all from the future, centering around one event - A human falling here. In some timelines, they would be kind and merciful. Sometimes, they would die from the fall, or someone would kill them. And then there were the timelines where they killed people." He looked at Grillby. "By the time I was fifteen, I'd seen everyone in the underground die. Papyrus, Toriel, Alphys, Undyne, even you. I'd seen myself so many times it stopped hurting."

"And you never told anyone?”

"It wasn't just dreams, Grillby. Even if I told people...Time started resetting. I would go to sleep and wake up two weeks earlier. So there was no point telling anyone, because even if I did, eventually it would reset, and it'd be like I never told them. So yeah, I did tell people about it. It just....it didn’t matter."

"Sans...how long has it been like this?" Grillby asks, gently.

"Not counting time that reset? Fifteen years."

"Including time that reset?"

Silence.

"Sans?"

"I...I've lost count. It all blurs together, after a while." He looks at Grillby, a tired look on his face. "My best guess? Somewhere between sixty and seventy-five years."

"Is...Is it still happening?"

"No," he says quietly. He smiles, a real, genuine smile. "Not since the barrier fell. I think...I think it's over." His smile falls a bit. "I hope so, at least. There's always the chance."

"Thank you for telling me, Sans."

"Thanks for listening. Now, where was I?"

"Something about determination?"

"Right. Gaster wanted to control me when I was...that other thing. A Gaster Blaster. He'd force me to change, then try to see if he had any control over me. Thing is, when I'm like that, I'm not quite me. Whatever I'm feeling when I change, I'm stuck like that. So one day, not long after it first happened, Gaster wants to do tests with it, and I'd already had a long day of testing and not much sleep the night before, so when he tries to get my magic to overflow, I don't just change. I snap. I end up in this state halfway between myself and a Blaster, and I'm yelling at him, about how it’s his fault I didn’t sleep last night because I didn’t wanna wake up Papyrus by screaming. About how I only let him use me as a test subject because I don't want him to hurt Papyrus, about how every morning I would wake up from dreams about dying and wish it would happen already. And then I shoved him." Sans falls silent.

"....And?"

"We were inside the machine he made - the Core. And we were in the part that made the artificial determination that kept him alive. When I pushed him, he..." He closes his eyes, breathes in, then out. Does it a second time. "He hit the machine. It broke. I shoved him again. We...we fought. He grabbed the closest thing he could, which happened to be a couple of syringes full of determination. He tried to use it on himself. The other...the other he used on me. To get me to back off. I..." his voice is trembling, but he forces himself to keep going. "I was so mad that instead of hitting him, I used my magic to throw him into the Core." He’s shaking again, trying to speak anyways. "I watched him fall. I watched him hit the lava. I...I watched..."

He’s being hugged, suddenly, and he gives up trying to speak. Grillby holds him tight. He pulls back, hands still on Sans' shoulders. "None of what happened to you is your fault," Grillby says fiercely. "None of it. Do you understand?"

Sans nods, startled by the intensity of Grillby's gaze.

"I...yeah. Anyway." He takes a deep breath. "I passed out after that. When I woke up, it was to two guards asking me if I was okay. Asking why I was there. I told them I was with Gaster. They asked me who Gaster was." Another deep breath. "Somehow, the combination of Gaster being nearly soulless, running on determination, and then being pushed into the Core led to him being erased from existence. No one remembered him except me. I went back to my room, got Papyrus, and told him we were leaving. He was so excited he didn’t even question it. Or, who knows, maybe he could tell how freaked out I was. We walked for - for hours. Eventually Papyrus fell asleep and I strapped him to my back and kept going. We ended up in Snowdin."

"That I remember," Grillby says. "I went to close up for the night only to find two skeletons on the porch."

"You saved our lives," Sans says. "The rest...I mean, you know most of it. Pap and I lived on the streets for a while. You lent us money-"

"That you still haven't paid back," Grillby says, a smile in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah, pay my tab, we've been over this," Sans says, but he’s smiling. “That was when I realised time was resetting. I’d cleaned my room the night before, only to wake up and see a huge mess. I started keeping a notebook to keep track. But other then that detail...You know most of this stuff. Papyrus grew up, got a job, made me get one...Kept me from giving up.” He yawns. "What time is it?"

"Its nearly one in the morning."

"Ah, jeez, I've been talking for a while. I should get going."

"At one in the morning?"

Sans doesn’t reply.

"It would make me feel better if you stayed here tonight," Grillby says. "I have a guest room, after all."

"If it'll make you feel better," Sans says. He heads to the back of the restaurant, to the staircase that leads to Grillby's house. He pauses on the first step. "Hey, Grillby?"

"Yes?"

"...Thanks. For listening."

"Thank you for being willing to talk."

"Anytime you wanna return the favour, Grillbz...I'm willing to listen."

Grillby nods. "I'll keep that in mind," he says, a small smile in his voice. "Sleep well, Sans."

"You too." With that, he heads up the stairs, barely making it to the guest room before falling asleep. 

He doesn’t dream.

**Author's Note:**

> i accidentally wrote this entire thing in one day  
> crossposted on tumblr! my url is http://lakesandquarries.tumblr.com/ and i am deep in undertale hell. follow for more soft skeleton suffering


End file.
